I don't use pressure and take less than a minute or you'll remove precious metal

Wipe clean with cotton cloth and smear Mothers chrome polish on ramp and retouch with felt tip using Dremel


Again, using Dremel and felt tip taking very little time.

Have rouge on cone tip, then dipped in polish before starting

You won't have to work rouge as hard with mixture.. remember light does it... maybe a minute spent here.


Using felt tip shown I polish inside of chamber only... don't touch rifling.. done until I feel chamber warm in hand with Mother's Chrome polish.



This is a first in a " How to Tune your 1911 " series I can do if there is an interest.... this is just a very small part of tuning...

Awesome post. This should be made into a sticky thread.

Thanks 1911smith!

You are a gentlemen and a scholar.

With the provision that the idea of "polishing" feed ramps is NOT "like a mirror", it's to get a smooth surface that bullets won't catch on.

Too many people hear "polish" and think "like a mirror" and in trying for that mirror shine, they remove metal and alter the ramps, often ruining guns.
What we actually mean by "polish" is really de-burr or smooth any machine marks, and even then they don't have to be perfectly removed.

So why do custom guns have a mirror bright ramp?

Simple.
The customer pays for a polished ramp and seeing just a smooth ramp decides the gunsmith either forgot to do it, or he ripped the customer off by charging for something not done.
So, the gunsmith polishes to a mirror polish so the customer knows he got what he paid for.
The difference is, the custom 'smith knows how to give a mirror shine without over doing it and damaging the gun.

It's not hard at all to get " that mirror perfect " shine. I could have started using sand paper starting with 300 and worked all the way to 2000, or I could have used pressure with the rouge and Dremel. Could have used Cratex wheels or Formax liquid with a wheel...For a " Custom Smith Finish ". Notice the machine marks still show after polish. All we're after here is to remove the build up you see in my first picture... I do this once or twice a year to my pistols. Repeated polishing over time machine marks eventually disappear. I don't like to get down past them in first polishing because your removing metal, besides it's not necessary.. I think that's what you were getting at dfariswheel, just wanted to be clear.. thanks.

Great post 1911smith.  Easy to follow.  I think I would be the most uncomfortable polishing the inside of the chamber.  Seems that there are lots of opportunities to screw up here.

One suggestion I would make in moving this towards a sticky is the 'why' part of this.  As in what kinds of good things happen and what kinds of bad things are avoided by doing this.

I'm taking you to where you want to go but have to paint the picture first. Thanks. smith.

btt

Are you polishing with that orange stuff?  Do you ever use Flitz?

Wow, great picture tutorial.

For anyone non-american,

what's the red polish thingy you use at first?

The red stuff is called jewelers rouge, rubbing compound or polishing compound depending on who you buy it from. This particular rouge or compound is a medium cut. I use very little pressure in a short amount of time. Flitz is really good stuff but it's an ultrafine polish and in this case I needed a medium cut to start and finished with somethng like Flitz. For the barrel chamber you see I have mixed the two.  Answering both responses here. There are way more companies in the polish making business than the soft drink business. Everyone seems to have what consider to be best. I like medium rouge and Mother's. Flitz is more expensive and somewhat better. There are 7 or 8 different colors of rouge, color indicates grit.